Cuba turns tables on Trump at UN

Cuba rejected Washington's accusations at the UN on Tuesday as Latin American nations condemned the ongoing US economic blockade.

In his first, confrontational speech to the UN General Assembly, US President Donald Trump called the Cuban government – known for its numerous acts of solidarity and development programmes for the region and the wider world – "corrupt and destabilising."

The Cuban delegation to the UN protested the “disrespectful, uninteresting and unacceptable statements made by President Donald Trump.”

It said the attack was more outrageous as it came as the delegation held a bilateral meeting with US Deputy Assistant Secretary for the western hemisphere John Creamer.

The Cubans reiterated their willingness to implement agreements made with the previous US administration despite Mr Trump's hardening of Washington's stance in June.

It rejected “measures to intensify the blockade and interference in internal affairs” and “political manipulation of the human rights issue that was used as a pretext to justify those actions,” along with Mr Trump's making changes in Cuba's constitutional order a condition of normalised relations.

Meanwhile other world leaders slammed the US economic blockade of Cuba, still in place three years after the breakthrough in détente.

In his speech to the General Assembly, Bolivian President Evo Morales said: “The US must unilaterally and unconditionally put an end to the unjust blockade” against Cuba.

Furthermore, Washington must not only lift the “criminal” sanctions, but must “make economic reparations for the harm caused.”

Costa Rican President Luis Guillermo Solis also condemned the human, social and economic costs to Cuba, saying the blockade was not only ineffective but a form of collective punishment that harms its people's right to welfare and development.

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